Thousands of people have signed a petition objecting to the return of a toxic weedkiller to the streets of Brighton and Hove.
The petition – Keep Brighton and Hove Free of Toxic Weedkillers – was set up by Clara Usiskin on the Change.org website and has more than 6,000 signatures at the time of writing.
Ms Usiskin was inspired to start the petition after Brighton and Hove City Council decided to use an oil-based version of glyphosate weedkiller.
Members of the council’s City Environment, South Downs and the Sea Committee voted for the return of the controversial herbicide last month, almost five years after a decision to end its use.
Contractors will be expected to use a “controlled droplet” approach with the herbicide – sold commercially as Roundup – applying it to individual weeds rather than spraying it as previously.
Ms Usiskin set up her petition the day before the vote. It said: “There is evidence to suggest that in the years since 2019, biodiversity in Brighton and Hove has improved, for example, the starling, hedgehog and sparrow population.
“By creating and supporting biodiverse green spaces in the city, Brighton and Hove City Council is enabling vulnerable people to access nature.
“Glyphosates have been described as likely carcinogens by the World Health Organisation. The reintroduction of glyphosates in Brighton and Hove would put people and nature at risk.”
Ms Usiskin has sympathy with the council’s position because there was no phase-out plan, just an end to spraying the weedkiller along streets, resulting in some areas becoming overgrown.
She said: “As I understand it, I see they have a duty of care to make the pavements safe for people. That’s really important.
“My sense of what happened is they have found themselves in a situation where they have problems they can’t solve and they’ve got to get it done without spending much money and to them it seems like glyphosate is a solution.
“I feel really strongly that they haven’t explored all the options.”
Ms Usiskin had hoped to present the petition at the most recent full council meeting, on Thursday 1 February.
She started the petition on Monday 22 January and reached the 1,250-signature target for debate a week before the meeting.
But the council requires 10 days’ notice for a petition to go on the agenda so Ms Usiskin will present it to councillors in March instead.
She asked Labour councillor Tim Rowkins: “Has Labour u-turned on declaring a biodiversity emergency”?
Councillor Rowkins, who chairs the City Environment, South Downs and the Sea Committee, said that Labour had not u-turned.
He said: “We are working on a number of large-scale biodiversity projects in and around the city that are focused entirely on aiding nature recovery.
“(These include) implementing the city Downland Estate Plan, which is a landscape-scale intervention to restore wild chalk grassland on the South Downs and to move local farming practices away from the intensive methods of the late 20th century.
“Chalk grassland is incredibly species-rich and the South Downs represents 44 per cent of the city’s footprint so this will have a profound impact on the local and regional biodiversity.”
He said that the council had a duty to look after residents by providing safe and accessible infrastructure – and the unchecked weed growth without any plan to tackle it required a “reset”.
6000 is not 260000, please don’t let a small minority of nimbys dictate policy. We need spraying in the suburbs.
Indeed and most of those 6000 are not even from Brighton and Hove, (change.org has worldwide reach).
Exactly. Would people rather die of a fall over weeds sticking out of the pavement today or a potential few atoms of weedkiller in thirty years time? These naive campaigners seem to have zero awareness of immediate dangers to public health and safety having to take precedence. Common sense has become a rarity.
Indeed, looking at the petition, and very good of Brighton and Hove News to provide the link, many are from outside the city and, of those living here, there are quite a few local Green Party councillors past and present.
The petition is addressed to Bella Sankey and, as far as I know, there is no reason for her to respond. Perhaps if they’d tried the ePetition system which requires a council response, they’d have more success, as this attempts to validate where supporters live.
Would love to see the quantitative evidence that biodiversity and wildlife has increased since the council stopped using Glyphosate on pavements and gutters.
I see the usual statement of the herbicide Glyphosate being “toxic” is made – well it is indeed deadly, but only to plants.
Seems Clara Usiskin is just regurgitating the scaremongering misinformation that we’ve heard previously from Brighton based activists at Pesticide Action Network UK.
Seems PAN are very upset that the EU has not accepted their claims and has extended the licence for its use by another 10 years.
It is also perfectly legal to buy and use in the UK, the EU, and the USA. The previous “ban” by Brighton and Hove City Council only applied to use by council operatives on council managed land and they still used it for killing Japanese Knotweed and tree stumps. Anyone else could use it anywhere – even on pavements and gutters.
The trouble is this council had nothing in place to replace the use of weedkiller, which led to five disastrous years of slips, trips and falls, and dogs falling sick from grass seed injuries. Councils have a statutory, not optional, duty to keep the pavements clear for health and safety reasons which they blatantly disregarded for five years. Perhaps an foi to the council to find out how much they had to pay out in compensation for all the broken bones and injuries is in order. I know elderly people who seldom go out any more because they are so scared of tripping on the pavements. The trouble with do-gooders is this case is that they don’t have any answers as to how the council complies with its statutory duty without using weedkiller. I therefore refused to sign this petition. If they are going to complain about something, they need to have an actual answer to the issue which works.
Just one claim was made against the council for street plant related injury during that period and was settled for £125.00. No FOI needed as this is public info, and suggests a fair degree of exhale ration and scaremongering by weedkiller advocates.
There are lots of potential answers to how the council can fulfil its duties without pavement poison – have a look on the PAN uk website for details on how towns in the UK are addressing this. Trouble is that our council hasn’t really tried anything else and part of the thinking behind this petition is that they should do so.
Is that too much to ask?
The council tried many different options since the ban was introduced without having determined a practical alternative first, including manual removal and hot foam, and as has been seen, nothing has worked.
The only “scaremongering” has been from the anti-pesticide activists, cherry picking news stories that support their claims, and ignoring the analysis by professional scientists, manufacturers, and government agencies.
Your use of emotional terms such as “pavement poison” highlights your lack of knowledge of how Glyphosate works and how it binds to soil and rapidly breaks down into inert chemicals.
The council haven’t run meaningful trials – read the report justifying lifting the ban. They have carried out a desktop assessment of other methods and decided against them on the basis of assumptions, not direct evidence from trials. The council employed 6 people to manually remove weeds from the city. Six.
They have sat on their hands and done almost nothing and used the results of almost nothing to justify glyphosate use.
It is reasonable to request more work on this, considering the likely impact on nature and risk to human health.
the council only employing 6 extra people is a misleading statement as all street cleansing operatives have had there normal duties increased to include manual weed removal much heavier work than what they were initially employed for.
I bet most aren’t even local residents..
Trouble is too many Green Tree Huggers believe their own lies and spin. The biodiversity of Brighton and Hove is likely to demise quite rapidly with almost 50 80 percent of the trees in an around Stanmer Park dieing. Many trees cut down too and I see little being done to replace them.
Streets are streets and they need to be kept clear of dangerous obstructions caused by 5 years of neglect and green party politics.
Woodlands are in far more need of help and keeping the streets clear with some inexpensive weedkiller rather than pretending overgrown pavements are biodiverse and leaving some money to sort out Woodlands makes more sense financially and ethically IMHO.
Much more danger to us residents from the use of wood burning stoves which release toxic particles in the air known to cause asthma, cancer , heart problems etc. The air recently in our suburb is often very smokey meaning is is full of these pollutants . I wonder how many of those against spraying the pavements have fashionable wood burning stoves which are poisoning the air we all breathe
Not to mention the utter climate and air pollution disaster that are candles…
Hopefully those 6000 people might actually clean up the weeds in their areas then the roundup spray won’t be needed.
Maybe if we all did our bit no spray would be needed at all, but some people think the council workers should do everything for them.
Never stopped using it !
The plants shown in the photo can easily be cut back, and ‘grass seed injury’ can be solved by mowing. You don’t need to smother the whole city with weedkiller for the sake of a few trip hazards, if the council feels it really must use this stuff, they could try being selective.
That’s what they are intending to do – spot actions rather than “smothering the whole city with weedkiller”. Haven’t got read what the council said they will do?
Yes I have, and the ‘controlled droplet’ method starts next year. This year, it is proposed to use the traditional application method on plants along streets and pavements across the city, which is means drenching them. And they plan to do this three times.
easily cut back that’s debatable
Project fear at work again. The council has said that will not use it in parks, and use a localized delivery method.
As others have said it is perfectly legal to use. In fact not using this weedkiller would render most crop growing unprofitable in the UK, with an estimated 30% drop in yield. Not everyone can afford organic/free range food. Or perhaps more food banks is a price worth paying for not using weedkiller ? Or can we all afford a small hike in council tax ? Something has to be done as the damage to pavements/roads is racking up.
PAC is not a credible source for information on this topic. They only spread misinformation, scaremongering, and ideological dogma, and present no practical solutions.
*PAN
Citation for your claims please. I would, though, expect heavier spraying initially to get rid of the past 5 years growth.
Brits: noooooo you can’t use a weed killer that holds a group 2A classification!!!
Also Brits: *continually chugging alcohol, a group 1 class carcinogen directly implicated in over 7 types of cancer*
The “controlled droplet” method is even going to be what is used for at least a year following the Labour decision. They are going back initially to the bulk spraying that they said was carcinogenic 4 1/2 years ago. More Labour u-turning – can’t be trusted.
I would understand that they need to get rid of the historic growth before they can switch to selective spraying.
What would you suggest is done instead to get the weeds killed down to the roots?
Practicalities, or U-Turns as Linda has chosen to label it, have to take precedence sometimes over ideologies. Being stubborn and refusing to change on…well any topic you want to consider, lacks intelligence. To use that against someone is simply argumentum ad antiquitatem. A logical fallacy.
Thousands of idiots who get their ‘science’ from Facebook, YouTube, and tabloids. It’s been under such scrutiny by the crunchy tinfoil hatters for so long, we now have a ton of evidence showing it’s safe.
Unfortunately groups like PAN UK have been “cherry picking” reports that suggest problems. They rarely present a balanced view of the issues and just generate paranoia in the uneducated.
Is this all these crackpots have got to worry about?
I guess none of you saw the petition to save the starling murmurations that was signed by over 100,000 people? That also asked to limit use of weed killer. And yes the protest outside HTH was all local residents. They said they’d be happy to do the weeding themselves. Labour refuses to let them, or to introduce an opt out scheme! I agree weeds need to be managed, but people are entitled to not want a chemical solution. Even if you feel fine that it may harm you, lots of people know it will kill insects and pollinators. The science on the biodiversity crisis is not tin foil hat, – it’s globally accepted. A recent council report quantified that wildflower verges are improving biodiversity. You can find it at the last transport committee papers. I think it’s better to say, I’m fine with weedkiller. Rather than spend time trying to “prove” a point.
Was their any proven link between starling population and use of Glyphosate weedkiller on pavements and gutters?
Obviously not over 100,000 people in B&H, Ryan R!
Local problems need local solutions, even if that is a bit of weedkiller chemical. When local authorities introduce a ban without any viable alternative being offered, then something has to be done until a viable alternative can be found.
As for the people who are mocking the weeds in the photo with a ‘just pull them up’ mentality, the point is that pulling them up often leaves a bit of root in the ground that you can’t pull up, so the weed just re-grows. I should know – I’ve pulled up weeds just outside my place countless times, but bits of root stay buried, so the weeds re-grow, pushing up bits of pavement and embedding themselves anywhere they fancy ad infinitum.
You have alot of herbal sprays out there to kill weeds we need to look at that. Make up your own i had ants that came into my home i made garlic spray and sprayed it around the kitchen the ants packed their bags and never came back apple cider another way that for everything I got stung by wasps my foot was swollen and I soak my foot into warm water with two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar done that for three days and it went down read up every one and educate your self herds is the way
I am not sure you actually get the gravity of the situation. Alittle garlic and apple cider vinegar and a few homemade mixtures found on you tube , are hardly likely to kill or even stop some off the dangerous and damaging weed growth which has been allowed to decimate our City.
Brighton and Hove are surrounded by huge woodlands and fields which is the correct place for nature and biodiversity. Not the narrow alleys and pavements now forcing disabled users and mobility scooters into the roads. And mother’s with prams and children forced to walk into rounds because many pavements now are almost impassible.
So please use alittle common sense and educate yourself into what is really needed to clear our streets of this infestation.